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Mathematicians warn of AI threats to profession as industry encroaches

2 June 2026 at 19:19

Mathematicians warned against rising tech industry influence in a declaration describing the many challenges that AI poses to mathematics research. The timing of the declaration comes two weeks after OpenAI publicized one of its AI models as having disproved an 80-year-old mathematical conjecture in geometry.

The declaration was developed by a working group of 16 researchers over eight months following a conference held at Leiden University in the Netherlands in September 2025. Published on June 2, 2026, the resulting Leiden Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics has been endorsed by the International Mathematical Union—the international non-governmental organization that hosts conferences and oversees the most prestigious prizes in mathematics such as the Fields Medal.

“Mathematicians should find it quite striking that tech companies are suddenly interested in their work,” said Kevin Buzzard, a mathematician at Imperial College London, in a statement. “The Leiden Declaration is a well-thought-through response to what is currently happening, as AI continues to disrupt this space.”

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Hackers duped Meta AI support chatbot to steal celebrity Instagram accounts

1 June 2026 at 21:44

Meta’s AI support chatbot proved unusually helpful to hackers looking to steal and resell notable Instagram accounts—the hackers simply asking the bot to change the accounts’ associated email addresses while using VPN to mask their true locations.

Videos featuring the “shockingly easy” exploit have been circulating among Telegram groups for hackers and security researchers, according to 404 Media. The exploit allowed hackers to take over and flip valuable Instagram accounts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on the gray market before Meta implemented an emergency patch on May 29. The Barack Obama White House account and the Chief Master Sergeant of Space Force’s account also posted pro-Iranian images and messages while they were temporarily compromised.

Attackers simply had to use a VPN to approximately match their location to the target Instagram account’s region, begin a password reset process, and then ask Meta’s AI support chatbot to change the email address associated with the account, according to 404 Media. It’s a very straightforward prompt injection attack.

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Allegedly trashing Airbnbs to test robots puts startup in legal trouble

1 June 2026 at 18:17

A San Francisco robotics startup is being taken to court by an Airbnb host who claims the company’s “robotic prototype testing” caused extensive damage to his home.

In the lawsuit filed on May 26, 2026, Sean Donovan is seeking more than $12,000 in damages from the Bay Area startup The Bot Company. The court case was first reported by SFGate, which also interviewed Donovan about the unprecedented mess he encountered after the startup’s employees supposedly rented his former childhood home through Airbnb.

The first clue that the guests were not typical tech startup employees needing a temporary crash pad came when Donovan was taking care of the trash during the guests’ stay. He told SFGate about seeing “bundles of wires” throughout the house and a robot he described as a 6-foot-tall “Roomba with treads” that also resembled the cybernetic Borg from the Star Trek universe.

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Startup offers free home cleaning—if it can record it all for robot training

29 May 2026 at 17:16

A tech startup is offering New York City residents free home cleaning with a twist—it will send “professional cleaners” wearing cameras to record everything they do. All that data will supposedly be used to train AI-driven robots.

The unusual pitch comes from the German startup MicroAGI, whose website describes the company as a “team of engineers, researchers, and operators on a mission to accelerate embodied AI.” It began publicizing the free home-cleaning service run through its newly launched Shift app on May 28, with posts on social media sites such as X and LinkedIn featuring a video set to the upbeat piano notes of the Jay-Z and Alicia Keys song “Empire State of Mind.”

The Shift app website claims it “connects New Yorkers with free, trusted professional house cleaners” in exchange for recording “first-person cleaning footage to help train the next generation of household robots.” The “book a free cleaning” link directs clients to enter information such as a phone number, email address, and home address, along with access instructions, before booking an appointment that lasts an estimated two hours.

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